After a long wait, I finally received my Gnarbox 2.0 in September 2019.
What is it?
A compact on-the-go backup device with additional capabilities via mobile apps for editing of stills and video without a laptop, using a mobile device.
What’s it like?
The original Gnarbox looked a little, how shall I say it, umm, home-made. The 2.0 by contrast looks and feels like a high quality professional product. It feels tough and resilient, without being overly heavy, and inspires confidence. The buttons feel nice and the battery clicks in place with reassuring solidity. Even the packaging is nicely done.
Gnarbox 2.0 has an internal SSD, an integral SD card reader and a USB C port to connect external drives, plus a micro-HDMI port. I went for a 512GB capacity model plus an extra battery, which was available to pre-order on Kickstarter for $550.
Seems expensive?
Yep, but if I contrast the Gnarbox 2.0 with two other cheaper devices I have tried, it actually starts to look like good value.
The Western Digital MyPassport SSD (bought as a stop-gap whilst waiting for the Gnarbox) never functionally reliably for me, it always seemed to drop the wireless connection and I found the mobile app a bit clunky. In the end I gave up and went back to using an old Windows Netbook.
After that I tried the much cheaper RAV Power Filehub (2019 version RP0009). This device has no internal storage, but has so much potential. Unfortunately, it misses out on delivering what I want from photography backup device, by trying to be too many things. The no-touch backup option is great, where you just insert a SD card and it automatically backs it up to an attached USB drive.
Unfortunately, there is no option to make this an incremental backup, so unless you are wiping your SD cards after every backup, you may quickly fill up your external storage. Personally, I like to keep images on the SD card as long as possible or until I have at least two backups (and preferably one of those in cloud storage).
On that last point, I just never got either of these devices to work smoothly and reliably with Dropbox or OneDrive. In fact, with the Filehub, the only way I got this to work was to unplug the USB drive, connect this to my phone with a USB Host (OTG) adapter, and then use my phone to copy the files to Dropbox. All very fiddly, and easy to lose or forget the OTG cable…..
By contrast, the Gnarbox 2.0 offers the possibility to incrementally back-up your cards to the internal SSD, and to back up the internal storage to Dropbox once the Gnarbox gets a WiFi connection (back at your hotel for instance). In addition, the Gnarbox internal SSD can be incrementally backed-up to external storage.
All of this can be achieved in a very seamless way, with professional features like a MD5 Checksum to verify that the data has been transferred correctly. Backing up SD cards to the internal storage doesn’t require anything else, no cable, no dongles or adapters. There’s literally nothing to forget or lose, except the Gnarbox charger and cable (more on that below).
In addition the Gnarbox apps bring another layer of functionality, in terms of image selection and post-processing, without a laptop. The micro HDMI port is for reviewing images or video on an external screen (hotel room TV for example). So, with a suitable mobile device, like an ipad, the theory is the ipad provides the user interface, the external screen provides an expanded view, and the Gnarbox does the heavy-lifting in terms of processing power (it’s actually a pretty powerful device).
OK, so what’s it really like in practice?
More or less as soon as the Gnarbox arrived, I was off to Germany for a few days, so it was an ideal opportunity to try it out, as I would be travelling light and there was no room for a laptop or an extensive camera outfit, just a body and a couple of lenses.
Gnarbox needs a USB C PD outlet of at least 30W output to charge, and as I didn’t have one, I made sure to slip the supplied charger into my carry-on, along with a Samsung Extreme SSD. The charger adapts to UK/Euro/US wall sockets and has an additional USB A socket for charging another device simultaneously (although limited to 1A). I later swopped my ‘standard’ travel charger to an this Anker one with 45W PD.
Setting the unit up was relatively stress-free, once you get your head around the two wireless modes. Home is for when you have access to an internet connection via WiFi i.e. hotel room, airport etc, and is ideal when you want to perform backup to Dropbox for example. Field, as the name implies is for when you don’t have access to an internet connection, and the Gnarbox creates it’s own WiFi hotspot that you can connect your mobile device to, in order to browse your images.
I found though that the small but very clear OLED display and the four unmarked buttons actually work pretty intuitively, and after a few minutes experimenting there really was no need to connect a mobile device to perform basic tasks like a backup.
One glitch I did have is that at first I was unable to setup a cloud backup as Dropbox temporarily ‘froze’ connections from the Gnarbox Safekeep app. I had to wait until the next day to set this up and test it, but it did work fine after that. Hopefully this was just a one-off misunderstanding and shouldn’t occur again, and this is a one-time activity anyway, unless you change your Dropbox account or Gnarbox.
Conclusion
There’s a lot to like about the Gnarbox, and may be a lot more if you are a video maker and need to edit on the road.
But, overall there are cheaper solutions out there, not least of which is to buy a OTG connector, card reader and a big storage card for your phone. Or, there are more comprehensive solutions at similar cost, like a Surface Go tablet, on which you could do some cataloguing and basic editing (although you would need to add some additional storage).
Good
Very decent build
Feels rugged
Good battery life
Incremental backups
MD5 checksum
Not so good
Expensive
Flicking between wireless modes could be a bit slicker/more intuitive
Disclaimer
Unless I explicit state otherwise, I do not receive any incentive or inducement from the vendor/distributor of any of the products mentioned.
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